Brewdog’s ‘beer porn’ publicity stunt — how the craft world reacted

Beer giant Brewdog has said it is making a “genuine move” into digital streaming, launching a Netflix-style video service, but an accompanying parody website dedicated to “beer porn” went down exactly as you’d expect in the craft world.

The beer firm, which launched its streaming service on Tuesday, said the BrewDog Network will be an on-demand subscription service “offering a broad range of beer, food, travel and entertainment shows, with hundreds of hours of fresh content available from day one; new content added weekly and a new series premier every quarter.”

“Beer is our porn,” said a statement on the brewer’s website. Alongside the streaming service, it also built a parody porn site, Beer.porn, which it intended to be a send-up of pornographic streaming services like Redtube and Pornhub.

The site, it said, provided “a sneak peek into the stimulating content subscribers can expect to enjoy, and demonstrates the network’s desire to offer the most compelling content on the web.”

Much like the brewer’s attempt at satire on International Women’s Day by launching a “beer for girls,” this publicity stunt received widespread backlash on social media for being “confusing” and “sexist”.

Beer.porn was taken down later that day, and the link instead redirected to Brewdog’s streaming service.

So we’ve launched our very own Network to host all the greatest visual stimuli you desire – turn it on.https://t.co/LKQrZTRfNO pic.twitter.com/IcV2tJpNCb

— BrewDog (@BrewDog) August 27, 2018

A spokesperson for Brewdog told the drinks business the parody site had not affected the popularity of its streaming service, which it said currently has 4,000 subscribers.

“We launched in the USA on Monday with the mission of making craft beer content the most popular on the web, surpassing porn for the top spot. Our parody site, BeerPorn, was well received by many but not everyone loved the premise of the innuendo-laden web page.

“Visitors to http://beer.porn will now find themselves redirected to The BrewDog Network, where actual beer porn is available in abundance.”

Scroll through to see how the industry reacted…

Beer writer and author Melissa Cole took the time to write a detailed account of exactly why she found the campaign exclusionary and insensitive.

I’ve have multiple people suggest I ignore the lastest Brodog stunt but, here’s the problem.
Once again this a directly sexist campaign and, if you look carefully enough you’ve got some racism in ‘Jungle Fevre’ (derogatory term for interracial attraction, good spot @beerbabe)

— Melissa Cole (@MelissaCole) August 28, 2018

“Once again this a directly sexist campaign,” she said, adding: “if you look carefully enough you’ve got some racism.”

Melissa’s reaction covers everything from the fact that some videos depict Brewdog’s founders dressing as women (“The idea that ‘men pretending to be women’ is funny because, ya know, they do love at bit of transphobia at Brodog HQ and also the idea that men liking men is a good joke, homophobia, how very 2018), to the inherent issue with launching an ad campaign which ties itself to the porn industry, which critics said has a “long history” of sexism and exploitation.

Melissa’s reaction was prompted by a thread by US-based beer writer Carla Jean Lauter, who called the beer giant’s promotion and its link to the porn industry “confusing and disconnected.”

@BrewDog @BrewDogUSA You have probably recieved a lot of feedback on your https://t.co/npVl9whQYk website, but I want to explain to you why people might be upset about it. Got a second?

— Carla Jean Lauter (@beerbabe) August 27, 2018

“The butt of the jokes include men pretending to be women and being gay as a punchline. Neither are particularly funny or land well. Gay and trans people aren’t punchlines.”

“I am dissapointed that, as a company, you were unable to find any other way to market your online content than through the ‘lens’ of video pornography and jokes about sexuality, when your shows do not seem to be about that at all.”

Other bloggers blasted the company’s branding as “repulsive.

@BrewDogJames @BrewDog your porn thing is repulsive, what the fuck is wrong with you? I’ll be selling my shares at first opportunity.

— Rooster Jones (@RoosterJones) August 28, 2018

As well as this, a number of beer fans who had donated funds to the brewer through its various crowdfunding campaigns said they now wanted to sell their shares.

I am embarrassed to be a shareholder right now.

— Will Angus (@beercrit) August 27, 2018

Me too, it feels like they’ve gone really off track recently. Can we withdraw/sell shares do you know? Am not loving contributing to all this rubbish…

— Dani (@ohagandaaz) August 28, 2018

Some commenters suggested this could only be bad news for the beer industry, which is already facing a steady decline globally.

I guess I have to explain it to you. First, several of the videos made fun of the LGTB community while others used derogatory racial terms. Second, this makes the beer industry as a whole look cheap. In a time when market share of beer continues to decline, that’s just stupid.

— Jordan Overton (@jordanoverton) August 28, 2018

A spokesperson for the brewer explained in another tweet that the parody website was “a joke”.

This, of course, isn’t the first time Brewdog has had to explain to everyone on social media that a PR stunt that fell flat was “a joke”. Just six months ago, the brewer was forced to backpedal after launching Pink IPA. The beer, which was just its flagship Punk IPA repackaged with a pink label, was marketed as a “beer for girls”, and was launched to coincide with International Women’s Day in March.

Despite the press release insisting that the beer is a send-up of “lazy marketing efforts targeting the female market,” many pointed out that swapping blue labels for pink in a promotion around international Women’s Day was also a lazy marketing effort targeting women.

So basically someone told @BrewDog their Pink IPA was a terrible misogynist horseshit idea and instead of abandoning it they repackaged it as “satire” pic.twitter.com/abmg988rdJ

— Kirsty Capes (@kirstycapes) March 6, 2018

One commenter used a visual metaphor which pretty much sums the whole of Tuesday up.

pic.twitter.com/kE5scHsKzZ

— Joe Brock (@josephbrock) August 27, 2018

The “dumpsterfire”, for those not au fait with Twitter jargon, is used to represent “a chaotic or disastrously mishandled situation,” according to the Miriam Webster dictionary.